Today marked the first day back at work for academic staff at our college, Waterford Institute of Technology. From 9 am sharp, it was back to work with a maelstrom of meetings, meetings and more meetings; all remote of course, due to fears of a second surge of the virus in Ireland.
I must say it was nice to see and hear colleagues again for the first time in months. I had a very productive summer in terms of research, but it’s nice to talk to other lecturers once again!
The big news is that, as advertised in the media, almost lectures, tutorials and practicals in our college will be conducted online this semester, starting in October. We are encouraged to stream lectures from classrooms in the college, but we can also choose to do them remotely. Truth be told, I’m quite looking forward to the experience; when you have been teaching for a number of years, it’s nice to engage in different forms of delivery. In addition, we have been putting more and more of our material online in terms of Moodle; this is really the logical progression of such things.
That said, nothing replaces the teacher-student interaction, so the intention is that our students will experience a hybrid teaching model when they return in October. How exactly that will work will be decided over the next few weeks.
Antimatter 